CCS Board Hires Former Westerville Superintendent As Interim Chief

The Columbus City Schools have a new superintendent for the next year - Dr. J. Daniel Good, former head of the Westerville School District. Alison Holm has more on the decision

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After nine months, it came down to two candidates. Former South-Western City Schools Superintendent Kirk Hamilton, or Westerville schools chief Dan Good. After over an hour of executive session discussion and a unanimous vote, school board president Carol Perkins confirmed the decsion.

CP: Dr. Good is the leader that we need at this time. He has the right skills, the right attitude, and above all, the right passion that we need.

Last fall the 51-year old Good announced to reporters that he was stepping down as the head of the Westerville district in order to take advantage of reforms to the state’s pension fund. But he was interested enough in the challenges presented by the Columbus City Schools to not only apply – but to start a few days early. Previously he served as superintendent for the both the Worthington and Wooster school districts, and was chief of Ohio school improvement services.

During his tenure at Westerville the district improved from a B to an A plus on the state report card. A levy request failed in November, triggering a proposed 23 million dollars in cuts. Although a narrowly successful March levy restored some of the cuts were restored, over 30 teachers still lost their jobs and many more retired. Perkins says Good is not put off by the sometimes contentious relationship with Mayor Michael Coleman’s Columbus Education Commission, which recently released a volume of proposed reccomended changes for the district, saying Good appreciates the input. And Perkins say, with an interim in place for the next year, the district can start moving forward.

CP: While this past year has been extremely difficult – and we can all attest to that – there are close to 800,000 residents in our community, 50,000 students, and approximately 83-hundred Columbus City Schools employees that are counting on this board, as well as our mayor, to right the ship and show that Columbus City Schools can and will be a benchmark for a positive change on many fronts going forward.

The new job will be a slight bump in pay for Good, to 195,000. It will be a much larger scope; Columbus Schools is more than three times larger than Westerville. And Good will face some enormous challenges – incorporating the work of the Education Commission, proceeding with a much needed operational levy, and restoring public confidence in a district still involved in state and federal investigations